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Prep author Curtis Sittenfeld, whom you may remember from her The New York Times Book Review essay that lamented the fact that she doesn't have any lit groupies, is back with another (too) personal essay in this week's New York Observer. Instead of discussing her author photo again, Sittenfeld breaks down the difference between being "girlishly neurotic" and "womanly neurotic." (Hint: Girlishly Neurotics write diaries, Womanly Neurotics write essays.)

If you read the headline I Was Sylvia Plath-ish : But What Does That Really Mean Anyway?, you pretty much have the whole thing, which begins:

There were hints that I might be Sylvia Plath reincarnated as early as high school, but confirmation didn t arrive until the summer of 1996, shortly before my 21st birthday. As a 16-year-old, I d won Seventeen magazine s annual fiction contest, as Plath had done in 1950, and the Plath comparisons began almost immediately...


Insert your own "back away from the oven" joke here.
The New Yorker's Diary [NYO]
ESSAY; You Can't Get a Man With a Pen [NYTBR]
[Sittenfeld photo, via NYBR]